What do you do for heater redundancy

[georgec]

Hi all,

Did some searching and it seems lots of folks do different things.

I currently have a single Jager heater in my nano (14G), controlled by my Apex Lite.

There’s not the same amount of room vs when I was running a 40G tank with a 20G sump. But, I just got another Jager for redundancy (though now also considering getting a neotherm instead because it’s smaller). It’ll fit in the back chambers, though tight with everything else back there.

I’ve seen folks run two heaters on their Apex (which I used to do), with some alternating between the two heaters so they get equal use, and others setting one as a failsafe.

I’ve also read others that use an inkbird or ranco to control their backup.

Should my backup heater be totally separate from my EB8 or do I plug the controller into the EB8?

My understanding is that if my Apex fails, the EB8 should default to whatever fallback mode for an outlet. Not sure how often the whole EB8 would fail.

I’m also looking into battery backup air pumps figuring heat and oxygen are the two biggies for redundancy.

GC

 

[JVU]

- 2 controllers per heater (you have onboard thermostat plus Apex, so good there). You set one a degree or 2 higher than the primary controller to act as a fail safe to prevent fail-on.
- In theory 2 heaters each undersized a bit is best to reduce risk from either fail-on or fail-off of either individual heater. In a tiny nano like yours I personally wouldn’t do that since it’s likely impractical.
- If you run 2 heaters I like to have 1 of them half a degree or so higher on/off temps than the other, so 1 is doing almost all the heating and the other only comes on occasionally when the first can’t keep up. Benefits are far fewer on/off cycles overall and much less wear/tear on heater2 for when you need it to be the fail safe.
- The newer Apex with power monitoring is very handy if you set alarm for when it’s supposed to be on but not drawing power, to catch fail-off ASAP.
- The thing you mentioned about Apex failure but programming continues applies to loss of internet connection, not failure of the EB8. If the power strip EB8 fails everything loses power.
- InkBird or Ranco controllers can serve as 1 of your 2 controllers, for example if you don’t have an Apex or if your heater doesn’t come with a thermostat. I use InkBirds.
- I definitely would plug your heater(s) into the EB8, I think it is more reliable than other options.
- Battery backup for pumps and air is critical, especially with PGE shutting off power 10 times a year now.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Unfortunately my tank is too big to run a lot of heaters and buying separate controller power bars really isn't very feasible... I do run an older Reef Keeper not an Apex, so who knows maybe I can fix some of my old power bars up to run. But I run multiple "smaller" heaters so that if any fails off or on it won't be critical, just need to periodically keep an eye on the temperature

That said, on my smaller frag tank I'm setting up I just fished one of these out of storage.

HC-800U Analog Temperature Controller (up to 800 Watts) - Finnex

Free Shipping on Everything, Rewards, Free Swag, Price Matching & Free Returns.

www.saltwateraquarium.com

Old analog temperature controller, maybe not as up there as a Ranco, but I feel like it's better than an Inkbird (based on absolutely nothing) but it's about the same price so whatever, they do make a digital version too, but that's $20 more.

 

[georgec]

Thanks for the pointers. Live in SF, so we haven’t been as impacted by power shutoffs.

I’ll plug both heaters into the Apex for now, and keep thinking about a separate controller down the road.

Need to see how tight the two heaters are in the chamber.